There has heretofore been developed a technology for calculating a self-location of a moving object by matching three-dimensional map information with an image taken with a fish-eye lens camera. Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-10328 discloses such a technology.
With this technology, an image of a traffic light is taken with a fish-eye lens camera installed in a vehicle, and an elevation angle and a horizontal angle with respect to the vehicle are calculated from the taken image of the traffic light, thereby specifying a current location of the vehicle based on the light-emission position coordinates and the height of the traffic light.
However, the conventional technology described above has a problem that estimation of the self-location of the vehicle requires a traffic light and the self-location cannot be estimated at an intersection, on a single road or the like with no traffic lights.